Founder Profile

Pew is an independent nonprofit organization – the sole beneficiary of seven individual trusts established between 1948 and 1979 by four generous and committed siblings. Learn more about one of our founders: Mary Ethel Pew.

This case study was updated on July 31, 2017, to reflect newly released 2016 data and to correct references to calendar and fiscal year.

Overview

More than 3 million people last year crossed a small causeway linking Maine’s central coast to Mount Desert Island, home to Acadia National Park. They were drawn to its rocky shorelines, spruce-fir forests, and towering granite peaks, including the tallest point on the Atlantic coast. A network of hiking trails and roads cuts through most of the park, giving visitors a chance to spot bald eagles, peregrine falcons, white-tailed deer, moose, and minks. Patches of the sprawling park are also found on the adjacent Schoodic Peninsula and tiny Isle au Haut to the south. While the large crowds, particularly in the summer, are a boon to Bar Harbor and other villages on the park’s edges, Acadia struggles to keep up with crucial repair needs, which total $68.6 million.

Maintenance challenges

Acadia’s maintenance backlog includes critical infrastructure, buildings, and important sites. Acadia’s historic carriage roads are popular with hikers, bikers, and horseback riders, and serve as the primary connection to the park’s interior. About 20 years ago, with assistance from Friends of Acadia, a nonprofit organization, the park restored all but the most popular carriage road: Eagle Lake Loop. The loop has been in such high demand that park officials have resorted to frequent stopgap fixes, and nearly half of it requires extensive maintenance, at a cost of over $2 million. The deferred maintenance for all carriage roads in the park is $8 million.

Built in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, Acadia’s headquarters is also in dire need of repairs and renovations. One-inch-wide cracks between cinderblocks extend from the roof of the maintenance building to its foundation, sending frigid air inside during the winter. Its roof leaks and is caving in, and wooden boards have fallen from the ceiling. And the park’s administrative office requires a new heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The combined fixes and upgrades will cost about $15 million.

Sieur de Monts, a popular landmark built over a spring, is located within the Cadillac Mountain watershed, an important wetland habitat. The site formerly housed restrooms connected to septic tanks, but testing of nearby water determined that the tanks were leaching and contaminating the watershed. The National Park Service (NPS) redirected the wastewater, but $100,000 is needed to restore the watershed.

And Hulls Cove Visitor Center, at the northern entrance to Mount Desert Island, requires accessibility improvements for visitors using wheelchairs and a new HVAC system, at a cost of $1 million.

The park is responsible for creating Bar Harbor as it is today. The only thing that sets Bar Harbor apart is Acadia.Eben Salvatore, a director for Ocean Properties, which owns hotels in Bar Harbor, in a 2016 interview with the Bangor Daily News1

Recommendations

To address the deferred maintenance needs at Acadia and other NPS sites in Maine and across the country, Congress should:

Ensure that infrastructure initiatives include provisions to address park maintenance.

Provide dedicated annual federal funding for national park repairs.

Enact innovative policy reforms to ensure that deferred maintenance does not escalate.

Provide more highway funding for NPS maintenance needs.

Create more opportunities for public-private collaboration and donations to help restore park infrastructure.

The Pew Charitable Trusts works alongside the National Parks Conservation Association, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and other national and local groups to ensure that our national park resources are maintained and protected for future generations to enjoy.

The National Park System protects more than 400 natural, historic, cultural, and recreational sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories. In 2016, as the National Park Service (NPS) celebrates its 100th anniversary, many of these cherished places are showing signs of age: crumbling roads and bridges; neglected historic buildings; eroding trails; and deteriorating electrical, water, and sewage systems.

America&rsquo;s national parks are more popular than ever, but they&rsquo;re facing serious challenges. Aging infrastructure and decades of underfunding have resulted in a backlog of maintenance repairs that is estimated at nearly $11.3 billion.